The Zebra Network

by Sean Flannery

  Do the unexpected. Strike back. Hit them until it hurts and they begin to bleed. Keep them off balance. Frighten them into making a mistake.

  The porter helped McAllister down from the tall step, and then took Stephanie’s arm and helped her.

  “Hope you folks had a nice trip with us,” he said pleasantly. McAllister nodded absently as his eyes scanned the busy platform.

  A large man in a redcap’s uniform stood about twenty feet away, watching them, but then his gaze was diverted as the next passengers were helped down from the train.

  Stephanie took McAllister’s arm and together they walked slowly down the platform to the gates, then past a big knot of people, among them two men dressed in sheepskin coats intently watching the departing passengers, and then they were on the escalator going up to the main ticket hall. The cavernous, ornately decorated station was decked out for the holidays. Christmas music played from the public address system, interrupted only when train announcements were made. There were a lot of people hurrying back and forth. Two police officers stood by the main doors.

  “Easy,” McAllister said under his breath, Stephanie’s grip tightening on his arm as they headed directly across the hall.

  The two cops barely glanced at them as they reached the doors and stepped outside into the very cold morning. A stiff wind was blowing off the lake. Taxis were coming and going. The driver of one of them near the head of the line, was dressed in a sheepskin jacket, just like the others below on the platform and the one who had come aboard the train for them. And like the others, he looked their way for just a moment, registering the fact they were not his targets, before his concentration went back to the doors.

  McAllister tossed their bags in the backseat of the lead taxi and he and Stephanie got in. “Is there a hospital nearby?” The cabbie looked at them. “You sick or something?”

  “My wife is going to have a baby,” McAllister said with a straight face.

  For a moment a startled expression crossed the driver’s face, but then he grinned and laughed. “Yeah, sure, a baby,” he said. “Mercy Hospital is just a few blocks from here, that be okay?”

  “Just fine,” McAllister said. “Actually it’s my ticker.”

  “You going to be okay, mister? I mean is this an emergency?”

  “Slow and easy,” McAllister said, his accent broad, southern. “That’s the ticket.”

  They got off in front of the emergency room entrance, and as soon as the taxi was gone, they walked through the hospital to the front where from a pay phone McAllister called for another cab, this one out to O’Hare Airport.

  While they waited for the cab to arrive, McAllister went into the men’s room where in one of the toilet stalls he quickly broke down both of their guns, unloading the clips and distributing the parts and the bullets in all three suitcases. They would check their bagsthrough, rather than try to carry them aboard. He didn’t expect any trouble.

  “Where are we going?” Stephanie asked, her manner lethargic for the moment now that they were out of immediate danger, and the realization of what she had done suddenly hitting home.

  “Los Angeles,” McAllister said. “It’s time to strike back.”

  Chapter 26

  It was just one-thirty in the afternoon when their plane landed at Los Angeles International Airport. McAllister got their bags while Stephanie waited for him by the walkway to the parking ramp. They’d had no trouble getting a flight out of Chicago, nor had they encountered any questions because of what their baggage contained. Nevertheless the flight had been a difficult one; for him because he had no idea what they would find when they got out here, and for Stephanie because of what she had done.

  I have killed in the name of revenge. It wasn’t a pretty sight, and I am not proud of myself The act did notfilfill me as I had led myself to believe it would. Help me, David. I believe in you. Please hold me, and for God’s sake, never let me go.

  But he could not help her, not now, not until this insanity had been resolved. Somehow they had been traced to Chicago. The message would already have reached Washington: They’re heading west! Stop them, at all costs, stop them!

  “Are you all right?” he asked, reaching for her. She was pale, and there was a light sheen of sweat on her forehead. Los Angeles was considerably warmer than Baltimore or Chicago, and she was extremely nervous.

  “Somebody is going to come looking for us once they realize we’ve left Chicago,” she said.

  “Probably,” McAllister said. “We’re going to have to move fast now.”

  “How? We can’t rent a car, not now, not in our own names.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “We’re going to steal one.” They took the moving walkway to the long-term parking ramp at the outer perimeter of the terminal building. An elevator brought themup to the sixth level where he made her wait as he hurried down the rows of cars looking for just the right one.

  He found it five minutes later. The car was a newer model Mercedes 300D, with the long-term parking ticket lying in clear view on the dash. There was quite a lot of traffic in the ramp, but no one paid him any attention as he took out his lock-pick set and started to work on the driver’s door lock. The date and time stamped on the ticket had been early this morning. The car’s owner would not have left it here if he hadn’t planned on being gone at least overnight. Which meant they’d have at least eighteen hours to use the car before any alarm was raised.

  The car was equipped with electric locks, and within twenty seconds all four door locks popped open, and he got in behind the wheel, found the trunk release button and hit it, the trunk lid clicking open.

  Around back he opened the trunk, found the tool kit which he knew all new Mercedeses were equipped with, and took the largest flat-bladed screwdriver out of it. Closing the trunk lid, he got back in behind the wheel. A blue Chevrolet station wagon came slowly past him, and then turned the corner at the end of the row and headed down the ramp to the exit. McAllister inserted the screwdriver blade beneath the lip of the ignition lock on the steering column and pryed it outward with a sharp twist, putting his muscle into it.

  The lock popped neatly out of its hole, automatically releasing the pin that held the steering wheel in position, and exposing a bundle of wires. Again checking to make sure that he wasn’t being observed, McAllister bared three of the color-coded wires, twisted two of them together, then used the screwdriver to short across that pair and the third wire. The Mercedes’s engine roared to life.

  The countdown had begun, and although he had no idea what they would find, if anything, there was no turning back for either of them.

  Los Angeles was a huge, sprawling city. Traffic on the freeways was heavy even at two-thirty in the afternoon. In a few hours it would be bumper-to-bumper. Kathleen O’Haire lived in Canoga Park, a pleasantsuburb in the Valley about twenty miles north of the airport. McAllister had only been to Los Angeles twice in his life, but Stephanie had spent time here when she was in the air force and she knew the city fairly well so was able to direct him.

  The Zebra Network had been a fabulously successful operation for a number of years. James O’Haire, who had been a U.S. Army Delta Force graduate, had drifted into the world of the so-called soldier of fortune, fighting for a time in Central America and then Africa where presumably he had made his Soviet contacts in Libya.

  How much had his wife known about his activities? Her name had appeared in the Agency file, yet she’d never been arrested. It was possible she knew nothing.

  “What if she’s a dead end?” Stephanie asked. They’d reached Sherman Oaks and turned west on the Ventura Freeway. McAllister glanced at her. “Then we’ll try Denby up in San Francisco.”

  “And him? What if he’s a dead end too?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll just have to see.”

  “We’ll just have to see,” she repeated, and then fell silent, looking out the window at the foothills in the hazy distance.

  On the way out from the airp
ort she had dug out the parts of their weapons from their luggage and had assembled them; her lightweight.32 automatic with a fair degree of proficiency, and his P38 with a little bit of coaching from him.

  “They didn’t teach us that one at school,” she’d explained. It was Doug Ballinger’s gun, and before she handed it to McAllister she turned it over in her hands, shaking her head.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She looked up. “I keep thinking that none of this should ever have happened,” she said. “And yet another part of me realizes that it couldn’t have been any other way.”

  “If we don’t win, they will.”

  “This time,” she said earnestly. “There’ll always be another time, and another. It’ll never end.”

  There was no answer, so McAllister had concentrated on his driving, the big car handling smoothly in traffic, and she had turned to stare out the window. The broad, treeless street in Canoga Park was typical of southern California. The houses were all long, low ranch style, with two-car garages, paved driveways, and cars, vans, campers, and bicycles parked everywhere. Some backyards had ahoveground swimming pools, others had redwood patios. The sameness of the houses was faintly depressing. This was the great American threat that the O’Haires and their spy network had tried so hard to bring down.

  It was three-thirty in the afternoon when they drove slowly past 1 Kathleen O’Haire’s house, a white Camaro parked in front of the open garage door. So far as McAllister could tell there was no movement from within the house, but it was a safe bet that the woman was at home.

  At the corner he drove back a couple of blocks to a 7-Eleven store on Sherman Way, the main highway through the town, where Stephanie called Kathleen O’Haire’s number from a pay phone. It rang only once before a woman with a pleasant southern accent answered. Stephanie immediately hung up.

  “She’s home.”

  “Then we wait,” McAllister said, pulling out of the parking lot and heading back around the block again.

  “For what?”

  “For her to leave so that I can get into the house and have a look around.”

  “Or until someone shows up looking for us,” Stephanie said. “Or that,” McAllister replied.

  They parked at the corner a half a block from Kathleen O’Haire’s house. McAllister left the engine running, his eyes automatically scanning the street, the houses, the parked vehicles. There was nothing out of the ordinary here. No watchers. No one waiting for someone to show up, unless they were in the house with the woman. That was possible, though for some reason he doubted it. If Kathleen O’Haire had been an active part of the network, their control officer would be leaving her alone now. And if she knew nothing, there’d be no reason to go after her, unless someone had figured that he and Stephanie would be showing up.

  He lit a cigarette, pulling the smoke deeply into his lungs, hisfingers drumming on the steering wheel. He had never been much good at waiting, though he had done a fair amount of it in his career.

  Patience has got to be a part of your tradecraft, boyo, his father had told him in the early days. Good things come to those who wait… and watch.

  Stephanie had withdrawn into her own world, her eyes directed down the street to the neighborhood, but he didn’t think she was seeing anything other than blood and death and senseless destruction.

  He looked in the same direction she was staring and he wondered if they were seeing the same things. A normal, middle-class neighborhood, nothing more. Relatively quiet on weekdays-meter readers, garbage collectors, repairmen, newspaper delivery boys, mailmen. In the evenings the houses would be lit, kids would be coming home from school. And on weekends lawnmowers would be buzzing, barbecue grills would be smoking, pool parties would be noisily in progress. What had James O’Haire and his brother and the others wanted? What claims did their brand of socialism have over this domestic scene?

  Careful the man who becomes maudlin in this business, boyo. There’s no room for that claptrap sentiment. It could cost you your life. No rose-colored glasses here. This is the real world.

  At a few minutes before five, Kathleen O’Haire came out of her house. She was a large woman, tall and red-haired. She climbed into her car and backed out of the driveway.

  McAllister got out of the car and Stephanie slid over behind the wheel.

  “When she starts back, call the house. let it ring twice, then hang up.”

  “What makes you think she’s coming right back?”

  “She would have closed her garage door,” McAllister said. Stephanie nodded.

  “Give us five minutes, then come in,” McAllister said. “But watch yourself. And make damed sure that no one is following her and picks you up as well.”

  “Good luck.”

  “You too,” McAllister said. There was so much he wanted to sayto her, but now wasn’t the time. He crossed the street as she drove around the corner and accelerated after Kathleen O’Haire’s Camaro.

  A young girl, her long hair streaming from beneath a baseball cap, canvas newspaper sacks attached like saddlebags to the back of her bicycle, rode past him, tossing newspapers up on the lawns with practiced ease. Four doors down from the O’Haire house several boys were playing basketball in the driveway. Music came from one of the houses across the street. Normal sounds and sights, he thought.

  McAllister picked up Kathleen O’Haire’s newspaper and walked up the driveway. The garage was a mess, junk piled everywhere; a small freezer sat in a corner near the kitchen door, a washer and dryer next to it. But there were no toys. The O’Haires, he’d read, had had no children. For a moment he wondered if they’d missed not having a family as much as he did at times.

  The kitchen door was unlocked and McAllister went in. Straight ahead were the sink, stove, refrigerator, and dishwasher, a window overlooking the big aboveground pool in a pleasant backyard. To the left was the dining room, a tall glass-fronted hutch facing an oak table and chairs, a basket of fruit in the middle of the table. He laid the newspaper down.

  Standing just within the kitchen he was struck again by the ordinariness of the neighborhood and of this house in particular. From here one of the most successful spy rings ever to be operated in this country was directed. He had to wonder if the conspirators had sat around the dining room table in the evening talking out their strategies, sharing the product, planning goals.

  Had Kathleen O’Haire participated? Had she been here making cofiee perhaps, serving sandwiches to her husband and brother-in- law and the others in the ring? Or had they sent her away at such times to visit friends or neighbors while the boys played poker?

  An almost overpowering sense of dread came over him as he wondered if he were making a terrible mistake by being here. Kathleen O’Haire could be an innocent victim. By coming here like this he could be putting her into extreme danger.

  But her name had been in the Agency’s files. Why, unless there was at least the possibility she knew something of value to the investigation? Straight through the dining room a small alcove led to a bathroom beyond which was a bedroom. To the left, a broad archway opened into a small, but pleasantly furnished living room, shelves along one wall filled with a few books, a stereo system, some knickknacks, and several photographs. A big framed poster over the couch depicted a scene, which might have been in Ireland, of a castle perched on a hill across a lush green valley. A small Christmas tree, its decorations sparkling, was set in front of the window. There were no presents beneath it. A corridor led to the right past another bathroom to the three bedrooms. The lowering sun sent shafts of light through the windows at the rear of the house.

  McAllister had to rouse himself to do what he had come here to do. Starting at the back of the house, he quickly and efficiently went through all the rooms, searching the closets, the chests of drawers, the cabinets, behind pictures on the walls, in the medicine cabinets and behind the toilet tanks, beneath the beds and behind the curtains and even in the refrigerator, stove, and dishwasher. But there
was nothing here that would in any way tie Kathleen O’Haire with her husband’s spying activities. One closet was completely filled with his clothes, as was one of the chests of drawers, but there was nothing among those things that provided any clues either.

  It was well past six and getting dark when the telephone in the living room rang twice, Stephanie’s warning call. McAllister stepped out of the kitchen his gun in hand as Kathleen O’Haire began to speak.

  “Hello, you have reached the 0’Haire residence. I’m sorry that I can’t be here to take your call. But if you ‘Il leave your name, number, and a brief message after the tone, I’ll be happy to get back to you as soon as possible.”

  It was an answering machine.

  A long beep sounded, followed immediately by the dial tone, which cut out after a couple of seconds.

  McAllister stared at the machine. He had seen it but had dismissed it on his first go around. He rewound the message tape, and hit the play button.

  The unit beeped, a dial tone sounded for a second or two, cut off, and the unit beeped again, another dial tone coming on. These were callers who had not wanted to talk to the machine, and had immediately hung up once Kathleen O’Haire’s message had started.

  The machine beeped again, this time a woman’s voice came from the speaker. “I hate that damned machine, Katy. This is Chris, give me a call as soon as. Bye.”

  Two more series of beeps and dial tones cycled through the machine until the sixth caller who did not hang up.

  At first McAllister could hear little or nothing from the speaker and he turned up the volume. There was a soft, hollow hiss on the line. Long distance. Then a man spoke.

  “Mrs. O’Haire, I would like very much to talk to you as soon as possible. You don’t know me, but I assure you this is of the utmost importance to your safety… especially in view of what has recently happened in Washington and of course in Illinois.”